The 6 Creepiest Things Ever Slipped Into Children's Cartoons

#3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - The Oedipal Zombie

This one doesn't involve sly sexual innuendo, but we wish it did. The season four episode of the Turtles' 2003 revamp, "Insane in the Membrane," may be the most disturbing 23 minutes ever vaguely associated with Cypress Hill. It was deemed too fucked up to be aired on television (although it's included on the DVD).

The episode revolves around Baxter Stockman, April O'Neil's former boss and the inventor of the Mousers. After an increasing series of failures, Stockman has been reduced from a mildly handsome man in his early 30s to a significantly less handsome brain in a jar. So as a practical and totally not impossible solution, he starts building a clone of his old body to transfer his consciousness into. Seems like pretty standard cartoon stuff so far.

Unfortunately, something goes wrong and his new body begins rotting like a corpse, losing pieces as the episode progresses until it's just a mass of missing fingers and exposed muscle tissue and tendons.

At one point, part of his jawbone falls off and starts flapping around like the top of a hobo's top hat.

On top of all that, his mind starts deteriorating as well, giving him flashbacks throughout the episode to his innocent childhood and his dead mother. He also becomes convinced that he should kill April, whom he keeps calling "momma" as he slips in and out of hallucinations, tossing the kids a murderous Oedipal Complex to go along with the walking corpse of a black man they've been watching for the past 20 minutes.

Do we need to stop and remind everyone that this is a cartoon about pizza-eating turtles?

At some point between the episode's production and its scheduled airing, somebody in the studio realized the carnival of horror they were about to unleash on the children of America and decided to pull it, though it is still readily available to any kid with 15 bucks to spend on the DVD.

#2. Chowder - Ice Cream Ejaculation

Chowder stars the titular Chowder, a tiny blue monster of indeterminate origin training to be a chef, which is horrifying when you consider that his world is populated by anthropomorphized food, so at any given moment he is fricasseeing the corpse of a neighbor or loved one.

Anyway, the episode "Chowder and Mr. Fugu" finds Chowder in the care of Mr. Fugu, a bloated tomato monster with a blue toupee and no eyes.

The cone, inexplicably encouraging his own demise, tells Chowder to poke a hole in him and suck the cream out of the bottom. When Chowder agrees that this is a perfect idea, the ice cream cone quips, "Tell that to my wife..." implying that not only do ice cream cones get married, but that this particular marriage is being shattered by a drought of oral sex.

Ah, we're probably reading too much into it. After all, it's not like they intentionally drew the ice cream cone in such a way as to make it look unmistakably like two balls and a penis.

Not in the least. And there's certainly nothing weird about the way Mr. Fugu gives them a frantic spinning tongue bath.

Just forget we said anything.

#1. Rocko's Modern Life - Testicle Trauma

Rocko's Modern Life was one of the real pioneers in the "see what we can slip past the censors" cartoon genre. Creator Joe Murray claims that one of the series' biggest goals was to incorporate adult humor and references into the show that would likely sail over the heads of children. Predictably, this meant lots and lots of penis jokes.

So there's Rocko's local hang-out The Chokey Chicken, a focal point of the show where characters and plot-lines could intertwine. It's also a masturbation joke. Then there's Rocko's brief stint as a telephone operator, as the instructions on the wall behind him helpfully remind all employees to "Be Hot, Be Naughty, and Be Courteous" while he repeats "Oh baby" into the receiver. We never get a specific job description, and that's typically the way it works. You don't know it's dirty unless you know phone sex is a already a thing, as most seven-year-olds probably don't.

Also noteworthy is his pal Heffer's machine induced orgasm, initiated by a farmer that was apparently too dumb to realize that cows typically have more than one udder.

And then, there is the testicle trauma. It starts out innocently enough, with Rocko approaching a bush full of berries. He goes to grab one, trying to pinch it and pull it free...

He hears a horrible scream. The "bush" turns out to be a sleeping animal. The "berry" was its now-crushed testicle.

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The beast comes running out, clutching its traumatized scrotum, knowing that its chance of ever having offspring have been reduced by half.

Innuendo is one thing, guys. But for the love of God, we do not need our children growing up thinking this is a funny thing to try on strangers. For everyone's sake.

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